In the first death due to dengue this season, a 38- year-old man died at Himalayan Hospital Jollygrant. The death of the patient had occurred on August 29 but the hospital authorities had taken six days to inform the District Health Department about the death. Taking strong exception on the delay in reporting the case, the district health department has decided to slap a notice on the Himalayan Hospital.
The district vector-borne diseases officer Dehradun, Subhash Joshi said that the patient, a native of Pauri Garhwal and a resident of Chauda Bigha area of Rishikesh, had been admitted at the Himalayan Hospital on August 28 and had died the following day. He, further, said that the patient was found positive in the Enzyme linked Immunosorbent Assay (ElISA) test which is confirmatory test for dengue on September 1. He said that a team of the Health Department officials from Dehradun and Tehri had visited the house where the deceased lived but had found it closed. He said that survey of the locality to trace suspected patient had been conducted. He added that extensive fogging had been conducted in the area to kill mosquitoes responsible for dengue.
Queried over the delay in reporting the death, the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Dehradun, Dr S K Gupta admitted that the delay had occurred because of the time the hospital authority had taken to forward the information of the death to the health department.
He said that notice would be issued to the hospital authorities, seeking explanation on the cause of the delay. The CMO claimed that the department is alert regarding the disease and it has adequate stock of ElISA kits and other medicines needed to take on the disease.
He, further, said that teams of the health department are undertaking a door to door survey in different parts of the district. The team members are informing the people about the preventive measures to be taken for checking the spread of the disease, he claimed.
Dengue is a viral infection spread by the mosquito Aedes Aezypti popularly known as Tiger Mosquito. The symptoms of the disease are persistent high fever, rashes, headache and pain in the joints. In the acute cases, the platelets number decreases drastically which may prove fatal. In Uttarakhand, the disease is more prevalent in Dehradun, Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar districts. In 2017, a total of 198 cases of the disease were reported from Dehradun district while in 2016, 1428 patients of the dengue were reported. This year, the district health department has reported six cases of the disease out of which one patient has died.